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NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-132_8l9c.pdf

Decision is unanimous. Big win for 4th amendment. Will update after digging into opinion

This deals with the digital content on phones, California wanted the right to dig in to your email, SMS, photos, drop box, icloud accounts, etc because your phone was on your person if you were stopped.

Laconic · Jun 25, 2014

APKmetsfan said:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-132_8l9c.pdf

Decision is unanimous. Big win for 4th amendment. Will update after digging into opinion

Now hopefully citizens can keep their phones when they record cops breaking the law and assaulting people.

The Llama · Jun 25, 2014

Unanimous? Hallelujah! Expected this to be closer than that.

boiled goose · Jun 25, 2014

Faith in humanity slightly restored.

One for the people? Surprised.

WeAreStarStuff · Jun 25, 2014

Surprised at this outcome; good news.

Laconic · Jun 25, 2014

Generally. Generally safe from search and seizure. Where is the line, generally speaking, I wonder.

Hari Seldon · Jun 25, 2014

Ok that streaming TV ruling was slightly annoying but this is a big win. Supreme Court is up today.

The Llama · Jun 25, 2014

Laconic said:
Generally. Generally safe from search and seizure. Where is the line, generally speaking, I wonder.

We'll need a few more SCOTUS cases to figure that one out, I'm sure.

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

Laconic said:
Generally. Generally safe from search and seizure. Where is the line, generally speaking, I wonder.

Public safety kind of exceptions I think. Reading now

Hari Seldon · Jun 25, 2014

Laconic said:
Generally. Generally safe from search and seizure. Where is the line, generally speaking, I wonder.

I read some of it, mainly it sounded like the supreme court was saying more court cases would be needed to establish the reasonable exceptions... like for example if the cell phone was suspected of containing information of immediate need like a kidnapping or something I guess.

Don't Laugh · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer · Jun 25, 2014

APKmetsfan said:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-132_8l9c.pdf

Decision is unanimous. Big win for 4th amendment. Will update after digging into opinion

This deals with the digital content on phones, California wanted the right to dig in to your email, SMS, photos, drop box, icloud accounts, etc because your phone was on your person if you were stopped.

Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

The Llama · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

Its such a massive, massive invasion of privacy though, and the chances of them actually finding anything useful are likely pretty low.

Mammoth Jones · Jun 25, 2014

It should be protected. Everything about me is on my smartphone. My banking. My emails. My text conversations between my wife and I. My work. My location history. My calendar. My contacts with names, addresses, phone numbers.

The notion that a cop can just go through that because he wants to is insane.

Volimar · Jun 25, 2014

Gattsu25 · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

I don't see why this isn't something to cheer over. The data they can extract from your cellphone is greater than what they used to get by searching through your mail. Why would I feel remiss that they now have to acquire a warrant?

Neuromancer · Jun 25, 2014

According to one poll, nearly three-quarters of smartphone users report being within five feet of their phones most of the time, with 12% admitting that they even use their phones in the shower.

wat

pompidu · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

In a perfect world, sure.

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

Youre still not finished reading the opinion I assume?

Roberts addresses many of these points.

kame-sennin · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's home incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

If you change one word, you're making a good argument for abolishing the 4th.

demon · Jun 25, 2014

Mammoth Jones said:
It should be protected. Everything about me is on my smartphone. My banking. My emails. My text conversations between my wife and I. My work. My location history. My calendar. My contacts with names, addresses, phone numbers.

The notion that a cop can just go through that because he wants to is insane.

This.

There has really been no equivalent to smart phones in the past. Being able to download all the information from someone's smartphone without a warrant is an enormous invasion of privacy.

Neuromancer · Jun 25, 2014

Mammoth Jones said:
It should be protected. Everything about me is on my smartphone. My banking. My emails. My text conversations between my wife and I. My work. My location history. My calendar. My contacts with names, addresses, phone numbers.

The notion that a cop can just go through that because he wants to is insane.

...if you're arrested.

The Llama said:
Its such a massive, massive invasion of privacy though, and the chances of them actually finding anything useful are likely pretty low.

I don't agree with this at all. In fact if you read the very first page of the decision it includes an example of a search incident to arrest of a cell phones that providing immediate and useful information, which will be impossible now.

Gattsu25 said:
I don't see why this isn't something to cheer over. The data they can extract from your cellphone is greater than what they used to get by searching through your mail. Why would I feel remiss that they now have to acquire a warrant?

I don't know what you mean by 'remiss', but I think there are a lot of time sensitive situations where the time it will take to obtain a warrant will be harmful to an investigation.

APKmetsfan said:
Youre still not finished reading the opinion I assume?

Roberts addresses many of these points.

It's 38 pages long, yes I'm still reading it.

kame-sennin said:
If you change one word, you're making a good argument for abolishing the 4th.

Search incident to arrest never covered a person's home, only items on their person. So I don't think so.

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

Really surprised areo is getting more comments than this, with all the NSA hoopla and disdane for people "not caring"

fancimus · Jun 25, 2014

Really glad to see this ruling go through, and I also found the unanimous decision to be surprising. It does seem like privacy rights could be one of the most potentially uniting causes in the US. Hopefully this and other efforts continue to grow a coalition of advocates for these issues.

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

fancimus said:
Really glad to see this ruling go through, and I also found the unanimous decision to be surprising. It does seem like privacy rights could be one of the most potentially uniting causes in the US. Hopefully this and other efforts continue to grow a coalition of advocates for these issues.

There seems in my reading a warning to the NSA and other federal agencies about privacy rights in general. This court seems to like the 1st and 4th and hate the 5th

njean777 · Jun 25, 2014

Good, fuck the police thinking they can just search anything they want to without a warrant.

shadyspace · Jun 25, 2014

APKmetsfan said:
Really surprised areo is getting more comments than this, with all the NSA hoopla and disdane for people "not caring"

Same. You'd think it'd be on the top of Reddit with a bullet what with how outraged that community was about the NSA stuff. Nope. People only care about the news that confirms their biases.

Cat Party · Jun 25, 2014

Not surprising at all. The Supreme Court has always been very skeptical about new technologies and tactics used in law enforcement and their potential to violate the right to privacy.

SecretMoblin · Jun 25, 2014

...I got done done giving it a once-over, it looks quite good; kudos to Roberts for getting everyone on board (mostly)

Alito's concurrence, as usual, is a bit strange

I'm also not sure why some are shocked -- a ruling along these lines (not sweeping but mostly against what CA was trying to do) was widely expected, even the conservatives on the Court are prone to accepting convincing 4th amd arguments

eot · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

And if we forced everyone to implant location tracking chips we could solve way more crimes, but we don't because that would be going too far in the direction of a security state. Protection of people's privacy is always going to be a hindrance to crime investigations, that's a given.

Dali · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

Same can be said about any warrantless search. Luckily for us you're not on the supreme Court.

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

shadyspace said:
Same. You'd think it'd be on the top of Reddit with a bullet what with how outraged that community was about the NSA stuff. Nope. People only care about the news that confirms their biases.

Wait the whole government isn't leading us down the path to 1984? Must ignore

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

SecretMoblin said:
...I got done done giving it a once-over, it looks quite good; kudos to Roberts for getting everyone on board (mostly)

Alito's concurrence, as usual, is a bit strange

I'm also not sure why some are shocked -- a ruling along these lines (not sweeping but mostly against what CA was trying to do) was widely expected, even the conservatives on the Court are prone to accepting convincing 4th amd arguments

I think people were worried the exceptions were gonna be bigger. That they might accept some of CAs arguments about content on the phone vs the cloud. There was also some silly statements by the justices that were worrying

Neuromancer · Jun 25, 2014

I think it's interesting that search incident to arrest for cell phones has been around for as long as there were cell phones (the mid nineties?), yet only today has it been ruled to be in violation of the 4th amendment. So if the issue was as clear cut as everyone on here is making it out to be things wouldn't have gone this way for this long. I understand the decision and why it was made, though.

eot said:
And if we forced everyone to implant location tracking chips we could solve way more crimes, but we don't because that would be going too far in the direction of a security state. Protection of people's privacy is always going to be a hindrance to crime investigations, that's a given.

Implanted tracking chips are a ridiculous example that no one would agree would be constitutional, and is an example you're coming up with just to be absurd.

Dali said:
Same can be said about any warrantless search. Luckily for us you're not on the supreme Court.

I guess so. Of course there will always be exceptions to the 4th amendment, so this is just one less for you to worry about for whatever reason.

Deitus · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
I think it's interesting that search incident to arrest for cell phones has been around for as long as there were cell phones (the mid nineties?), yet only today has it been ruled to be in violation of the 4th amendment. So if the issue was as clear cut as everyone on here is making it out to be things wouldn't have gone this way for this long. I understand the decision and why it was made, though.

Because cell phones in the 80s and 90s were just phones. The only private information contained on them was call history (and that wasn't even the case for really early cell phones). Modern cell phones have become a completely different thing.

And as technology evolves, the laws are slow to catch up. This is hardly the only example of that.

Htown · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

Tough.

Want to invade someone's phone privacy, get a warrant.

eot · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Implanted tracking chips are a ridiculous example that no one would agree would be constitutional, and is an example you're coming up with just to be absurd.

Yes, reductio ad absurdum. Tried and true.

tim.mbp · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

Exigent circumstances exception still applies though.

Coriolanus · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

Oh hey, ticking bomb scenario, we meet again.

fallagin · Jun 25, 2014

Well, that is good.

Acorn · Jun 25, 2014

Htown said:
Tough.

Want to invade someone's phone privacy, get a warrant.

This so fucking much.

Being treated like a criminal without reasonable suspicion is never the answer to anything.

TCRS · Jun 25, 2014

wow, never thought I'd see something like this in post 9/11 america. good stuff.

Neuromancer · Jun 25, 2014

Thanasis Deitus said:
Because cell phones in the 80s and 90s were just phones. The only private information contained on them was call history (and that wasn't even the case for really early cell phones). Modern cell phones have become a completely different thing.

And as technology evolves, the laws are slow to catch up. This is hardly the only example of that.

OK but this decision today says that call logs and contacts, which were present on old cell phones, aren't subject to search incident to arrest either. So I see your point but clearly that's not the only thing going on. You're right about the second part though.

Htown said:
Tough.

Want to invade someone's phone privacy, get a warrant.

You don't have to be rude about it. =(

tim.mbp said:
Exigent circumstances exception still applies though.

I know. That's good at least.

Acorn said:
This so fucking much.

Being treated like a criminal without reasonable suspicion is never the answer to anything.

You're already arrested, which means the officer has to have had probable cause. Which is a step above reasonable suspicion.

NYCmetsfan · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
You don't have to be rude about it. =(

The court was

Acorn · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
OK but this decision today says that call logs and contacts, which were present on old cell phones, aren't subject to search incident to arrest either. So I see your point but clearly that's not the only thing going on. You're right about the second part though.

You don't have to be rude about it. =(

I know. That's good at least.

You're already arrested, which means the officer has to have had probable cause. Which is a step above reasonable suspicion.

Depends what they are arrested for.

If you're arrested for breach of the peace is that reasonable suspicion for searching someone's phone without a warrant? I don't think it is personally.

Neuromancer · Jun 25, 2014

APKmetsfan said:
The court was

That doesn't sound rude at all actually.

Acorn said:
Depends what they are arrested for.

If you're arrested for breach of the peace is that reasonable suspicion for searching someone's phone without a warrant? I don't think it is personally.

Good point. Mostly I think about the kind of cases I work on which are serious crimes that people get arrested for.

Cipherr · Jun 25, 2014

Neuromancer said:
Not stopped. Arrested. There's a big difference.

Personally I wouldn't be so quick to cheer about this. Searching an arrestee's cell phone incident to arrest gives law enforcement officers a lot of good information quickly about crimes that could be ongoing or just committed. So now instead of getting that information that they can act on immediately, they will have to write an affidavit, review it with a prosecutor, see a judge and get a warrant signed which could take hours if not days (especially if the arrest happens on a night or weekend.)

No, this is a good thing. Not having to have warrants to search stuff would probably also let cops solve crimes faster, but we don't give up that right just because of that possibility. You have to balance these things.

Get a warrant. The SCOTUS got this right.

Persona7 · Jun 25, 2014

Whatever happened with those devices the police use to fake a cell phone tower and collect data?

A Human Becoming · Jun 25, 2014

When was the last unanimous ruling? Feels like it's alway 5-4 for years.

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